-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A low-slung skyline . A slate gray sky . Rumbling . Close your eyes . It could be the sound of rolling thunder .

Instead , it 's another shell falling on a neighborhood in Homs .

Photos : Slaughter in Syria

`` You do n't know if the rocket is going to come in your living room or in your kitchen , '' said an activist who is being identified only as Danny for his safety . `` Everyone 's becoming used to death here . ''

Blood , he says , has become almost as commonplace as water . Still , the scenes are almost unbelievable .

`` I saw really horrible things I 've never seen in my life , '' he said . `` Kids in the hospital , a kid with his whole jaw gone . a little girl , a kid , she 's 4 years old , she 's dead , her sister 's 6 years old , she lost her left eye and her mother is in intensive care . ''

As the world talks about how to respond to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 's bloody crackdown on the uprising in his country , opposition activists in the country say his military and security services are engaged in a vicious campaign of destruction meant to wipe out the opposition . Almost nothing , it seems , is off limits , they say -- not shelling , not snipers , not torture .

To hear al-Assad tell it , the violence is the work of terrorists , and his troops are martyrs to the state 's effort to secure peace . But eyewitness accounts and videos streaming out of Syria on the Internet paint a starkly different picture .

Syrian rebel leadership is split

Where state television shows the Syrian president surrounded by clerics in a peaceful prayer , opposition video shows an injured man being hustled into a makeshift medical clinic from the back of a bloody pickup truck , mothers crying in the street .

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Where official images depict a cheering crowd waving Syrian and Russian flags during a visit from the Russian foreign minister , opposition video shows crowds of apparently unarmed civilians running through the streets in terror from explosions that blacken and bloody the streets .

And where the state-run SANA news agency says armed terrorist gangs are to blame for the violence , activists point to images of children , their bodies studded by shrapnel , running fearfully in rubble-strewn streets or asking , from under thick bandages enveloping a tiny head , what they 've done to deserve such violence .

Rocket attacks , blood in the streets and fight for freedom

In one video shot by activists , a man cradles the lifeless body of a child .

Smoke rises from a shelled building . Gunfire and explosions echo through the streets .

Not even the makeshift clinics where people try to help horribly injured civilians are safe .

`` They hit one of our field hospitals yesterday , '' the activist identified as Danny told CNN on Monday . `` The doctors died , the patients died . ''

Snipers and tanks from the Syrian armed forces -- at nearly 400,000 strong , according to the U.S. State Department , one of the largest in the Middle East -- stalk the streets . Barricades keep their quarry from freely moving , according to activists who say day-and-night shelling often hits residential neighborhoods .

Homs is not the only target . Troops raided Daraa in April , shortly after the uprising began , according to Syrian opposition groups . They shot indiscriminately , sometimes into homes , opposition activists have said .

Significant numbers of deaths have also been reported in Damascus and its suburbs , as well as Deir Ezzor , Aleppo , Idlib , Latakia , and Hama .

Throughout the country , government forces have taken over schools and hospitals to use as detention centers and sniper nests , Human Rights Watch reported this week . A father told investigators he stopped allowing his 10-year-old son attend school because of snipers targeting travelers on the road leading to school .

`` We called it ` the street of death ' , '' Human Rights Watch quoted the man as saying .

Human rights groups also say security forces have taken and tortured children .

`` Children have not been spared the horror of Syria 's crackdown . Syrian security forces have killed , arrested , and tortured children in their homes , their schools , or on the streets , '' said Lois Whitman , children 's rights director at Human Rights Watch .

One former adult detainee said security forces seem to target children for special abuse .

`` There is torture , but there is also rape for the boys , '' Human Rights Watch quoted the man as saying . `` We would see them when the guards brought them back to the cell , it 's indescribable , you ca n't talk about it . ''

While many suffer in detention centers , even more suffer in formerly peaceful neighborhoods .

In a video shot Monday , a man perched on an urban rooftop in Homs nervously chants AllÄ

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NEW : `` Everyone 's becoming used to death here , '' an activist in Homs says

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Syrians endure a hellish existence amid government 's crackdown

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Images shot by activists paint a starkly different picture than official government accounts

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`` We are getting killed every moment , '' an activist says